Upgrade priority list wrong at the gate
 

Flying from FRA on 845, I checked my position on the list with the GA. She said sorry you are at the bottom, not a chance, you should board with general boarding to get overhead bin space. Okay fair enough, at least they are letting us know there is no chance.
As boarding began, the concierge was there and I double checked with her. Same answer, no sorry, you are too far down the list. I asked her to check that my status was correct, and she looked and said you are SE. You should not be at the bottom of the list.

In the end I got the seat because she held it for me. She was on the phone with the help desk, and they could see my status, but they couldn't make the system put me in the correct spot on the list. They had to manually give me the seat. Scary.

I did not get an upgrade on the way out either, and now I wonder if the list order was incorrect as well. I will ask customer service to look into it for me.

Just a heads up for others, to push a bit if it seems like something is not right.

What? Since when was there a published upgrade list available to the public?

Do you have any more information? Time of check in? Fare class? Nominated or own credits?

I was going to post the same thing.

The "common assumption" is that it's ordered by status, then fare class, then time of check in.

However, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to indicate that it's much more likely previous travel time on the itinerary, then status, then fare class, then time of check in.

There's also anecdotal evidence to indicate that a S100K nominated by someone else will be below a P25K using their own credits.

Personally, I wish it were fare class, then status, then check in time, with no exceptions for previous travel time or nomination status, as this rewards high-spenders, then "frequent fliers", which is good for AC (and me with my FP :p).

But we have no idea how it works.

I would hope a concierge would have a general idea about how it should work, but I also believe that if it was common knowledge among any level of front-line employees, we would have found out by now.

My guess is that you were legitimately at the bottom for whatever reason (as hydrogen suggested, maybe because you were nominated), but the concierge thought you should get the upgrade because of your status.

That being said, we've all seen AC's IT. And as long as status trumps all for upgrades, I don't have a problem with them bumping a S100K to the top of the list, regardless of other circumstances.

+1

Once upon a time, I was flying with my mom YYC-FRA... We were both initially on the same booking but I split it when I was requesting the upgrade... We both hold SE and fly almost the same amount (small discrepancies).

I was #1 on the list... and my mom was #9.

The concierges took a look and worked all day to fix it.

Very strange, no?

I don't know. What were numbers 2 through 8?

That's an irregular situation though. You split an itinerary. So let's assume that this caused a problem for the upgrade list. That may be something that needs to be fixed.

But now I'm genuinely concerned about upgrade priority :p

My credits, requested 7 days in advance. Check-in was close to t-24, I was 0062. Fare class was Q.
And I didn't say I saw a published list available to the public. I said they told me I was near the bottom of the list. The concierge had a 2 page print out and I was on page 2.
She called the help desk, and they confirmed that there was a problem with the list order.
And for previous travel time, do we have any evidence that non-AC flights count?
The other 5 people being upgraded were not 100k. I saw one set of 75k tags, 2 guys were talking about getting bumped by SEs, and the lady I was talking to was not SE.

Only other weird point was that I had to add my ff number back in when I checked in, even though it showed on my booking.

Should not play a rile in this case though.

That refers to situations where one already got an upgrade on an initial, and long, leg. Say you fly MUC-YYZ followed by YYZ-YYC. You already got the upgrade on the first leg, i.e. already "paid" for the whole itinerary. In that case you might be high on the list for the YYC leg.

But here, the OP first boarded AC at FRA one would presume.

Of course if the credits did not come from the OP's account, but of a lower status person, list might be correct. But OP says it's not the case.

Why check in time?
Status and fare class make sense, but after that it should be request time.
Check in doesn't always work online (like for me on AC7 tomorrow) and sometimes I am in a meeting or busy.

Sure.

Just some way of breaking a fare/status tie.

Relative check-in time is easy to find out because the sequence number is printed right on your BP.

Shouldn't upgrade request time break a tie?

this just speaks to the fact that there should be a published upgrade list as with many US carriers at the gate.

Some stations, notably FRA, will let you know if you ask where you are on the list. They won't show you the list, but they'll tell you if you should wait or go ahead and board.

As we've discussed a few times here FRA delays upgrades until departure -30 mins. In my case this past week, they actually started boarding on time and at T-30 the entire aircraft had pretty much been boarded besides myself and the other four people who got their upgrades. If they didn't tell you then they'd have all of the people on the list waiting around only to have some not get the upgrade and then be forced to board last.

Send a private DM to www.twitter.com/ACAltitude with your PNR, and have them look into it for you. Your message will hopefully get where it needs to go faster than if you send it into customer service.

Air Canada - the industry leader in transparency :p

how hard is it to create an app - or a mobile site - that lists that waitlists the upgrade order of people who have checked in.... How much time and hassle would that save the gate agents/concierges and how much aggrevation would it save elites?

That would require them to actually be transparent on the order of the list, which they refuse to officially acknowledge. If we could all see the list, the gate agents would be spending their time defending it.

What they really need to do is share their algorithm, program their computers to apply it correctly and share the list. However, I really don't expect them to do any of that.

My "sure" was agreeing with you :p

I was just pointing out that I'm not sure they're tracking time of request once it enters airport control, whereas they do track check-in time.

I agree. Check in time should not be considered. Hard to believe, but sometimes one just can't get internet access 100% of the time.

Well then time of upgrade request would have the same issue.

I was giving a rehearsal of a big talk, and I actually said "okay I need 5 minutes" as my upgrade window opened up so I could upgrade my mom's flight.

But I absolutely understand that not everyone can do that.

For check-in time, sometimes connections will allow you to check in more than 24 hours in advance, and sometimes it prevents you from checking in 24 hours in advance.

But what else can you use to break a tie in status and fare class?